Echognome

I'm thinking more about a (13)=(45) hand with support for your major. I would think that in precision you would raise with a minimum and bid 2♣ with a max. Or do you always raise? Alternatively, if all of these bids do not exist, it seems somewhat of a waste of space. Maybe you bid this way with a 6-4 with a bad primary suit, but max values otherwise?

Hence the name "procedural penalty." A sea lion is not a lion... You mean it's not a "lion of the sea"? :) I'm just saying there are procedural penalties and disciplinary penalties and they serve different purposes. Not following proper procedure seems to fall under the former category...

Hence the name "procedural penalty." I think the laws should dictate how often they are given, and in this case they do. They were probably rewritten for the reasons you state. However, I can understand issuing a procedural penalty even without malicious intent if it really screws up the game. An example is misboarding the cards after you play the hand. Say that North at your table turns the empty board 90 degrees before all four people put their cards back in and this is only discovered after several more rounds of play occur. Then that messes up the game for everyone. I think this is an instance where a pp is warranted, even if it was an inadvertent error.

Josh, You should invent the newfangled non-fit, non-jump bid.

Equal length I would pass with any hand where game is highly unlikely and "correct" with any hand where we might have game if partner can bid again over 2♦. I mean I don't see any other basis on which to judge when I have equal length. Now if I have 2-2 in the minors, then I have 9 cards in the majors. I won't be 6-3 (else I would have rebid my major), so I would have to be 5-4. I assume I don't play reverse flannery and it wouldn't matter anyway if I were 4=5=2=2.

I think Mike and I need to brush up on our post reading. Given it's 2pm in the afternoon here, I can't even blame lack of coffee. :)

Perhaps I wasn't clear. YOU are a passed hand, partner is not. The auction is: Pass - Pass - 2♠ - 3♥ Pass - ???? If you routinely open ten-counts with stiff queens just because they're five-five in the minors, sorry. Pretend you had to sub for me after my ridiculous second-seat pass. :) Nope. I don't. Maybe playing a strong club, but not part of the problem. I will go with my 2nd selection then of bidding 4♥. Glad I had covered my bases.

Given partner is a passed hand I let this one go. If partner were an unpassed hand I would raise to 4♥.

Under the current setup, Ben hosts most of the forums. I think he does a great job doing it. However, it seems that having more people share the load might be a good thing. I know a few other people have moderator rights (e.g. Fred and Uday). Perhaps some of the subforums could be moderated by different people who could make their own criteria. It would obviously have to be under certain guidelines (such as not deleting posts simply because you don't like someone), but I think we have many intelligent, reasonable people here who could do the job. Right now we're discussing the idea of an experts only forum, but the idea could be expanded to some of the other forums. For example, perhaps the moderators in the BIL forum could make sure that posts that are rude or harsh to beginners are edited or deleted? Then maybe someone like Ben could focus on oversight of the moderators themselves and not have to get into the everyday moderation of all the posts. This may or may not be a welcome change for him. BBO would simply be in charge of setting overall guidelines and enforcing those and the moderators could do the rest. I see this akin to having BBF "Yellows".

Always preferred the simple solution: XX - They made a mistake. Double at will. Pass - Nothing to say. 1NTX may be our best result. Opener is allowed to run to a 5 card suit. 2♣ - Natural or 2(3) suited scrambling. Will XX if the latter. 2♦ - Natural or (rare) both majors. Will XX if the latter. 2♥/♠ - Natural 2NT - ART, 2-suited GF

20.1 but I didn't play long. It seems just a matter of finding the safe path between the blocks as they move around on a set pattern.

I don't post them all in adv/exp. I don't think it would be too difficult to figure that part out. I wouldn't say "offended" is the right word for my feelings about the limit being one per day. I just think it's a bad idea. You aren't solving any of the problems before of bad responses and you are limiting people that are coming up with good topics to discuss.

Perhaps one suggestion to address some of the concerns raised by Frances would be to have better guidance as to where to post a problem. The guidelines right now are pretty vague. I don't really have a problem with it, but obviously some people do. Another alternative is to have different classifications of subfora: Basic Bridge Questions Bidding Problems Lead Problems Defensive Problems after the Lead Assign the Blame Problems Bridge Experts/Professional Discussion SAYC and 2/1 Discussion Strong Club/Diamond Systems Discussion Other Base Systems Discussion (such as Polish Club, Ambra, etc.) Existing Conventions Discussion (e.g. what continuations do people play after Stayman?) New Conventions Discussion (e.g. a new form of Jacoby raises that people can add to their existing system) I am not set on this list, but I think it's at least clearer where to post a problem. Perhaps there can be a voluntary tag that one can set on any message that says "This is from a BIL" so that respondents can be a bit more polite in their responses? I mean if I make a dumb play or a clear error and get lambasted for it, I think it's fair game. However, I agree with others' sentiments that bridge experts should try to be encouraging and constructive to BILs.

I had thought that after the fact. Well maybe declarer can be 8=3=2=0 and if I play the ♣A, I have just given declarer his discard for hearts. But as Phil mentions, then I would have to play hearts now and again later when I get in or else I am squeezed. I simply played the second diamond, so cannot even fall back on that as an excuse. The 2nd diamond works, of course, if partner has, say, the ♥K. But then so would playing a heart. I haven't really come up with a hand yet where it's important to play our 2nd diamond now, but I will be happy for you to find one.

Yeah. They made some weird leads throughout actually. On one hand the auction went (1♥) - 1NT - (2♥) - 2NT* (P) - 3♣ - All Pass *Lebensohl And the 2♥ bidder lead a small club from Kx! Turns out his partner had the stiff Q, so it didn't matter. I also happened to have AKQ of hearts. Weirdness abounds.

Shouldn't these then belong in the interesting hands forum? As the discussion is about A/E, how does this affect you? Not if I desire advanced/expert opinions on them. Of course you are side-stepping the issue entirely. Again, I pose to you that we play bridge where hands come in bunches. I do not get a good hand for an expert forum once a day. However, if we want to totally rethink advanced/expert, then I can understand both limiting the posting ability to the forum and restricting the people whom can discuss the hands. That is a tradeoff I would be happy to make. I can only post one new thread per day, but I would get a higher quality feedback. What doesn't make sense to me is to not restrict the people whom can give me feedback and to restrict my ability to post! Then, all we have gotten out of the change is a subforum where you have limited the ability to start new threads. That will basically make the subforum less popular, without solving any of the other problems raised by the OP.

I mean we could just say that we will go down on best defense and I think that might be true. On best defense, however, they would have lead a heart. Does it help people if I tell them that East has both the A and K of spades?

I don't like the idea of a thread posting limit. I mean what's the big deal? You don't have to read the thread! Is the worry that your thread gets lost in the "muck"? I mean really. I can understand if people are just posting thread after thread of things non bridge related (and not in the water cooler). That's an issue of the moderators doing their job. Here's my biggest problem with a thread limit. I play live bridge a lot more seldom these days. I will play in a tournament and have several hands that were interesting to me. They may not be interesting to everyone. Tough! It's not like I can know which hands will spark interest and which ones will not. So I typically post about 3-6 hands at a time. Then I won't post another hand for weeks. How can it be a good solution that I have to post those hands one a day in a forum?

For what it's worth, I felt it was close between Double and 3♥. I didn't view pass as an option. In favor of 3♥: - Shows your 5 card suit and will likely be the only way to find a 5-3 heart fit - You have ♣AQ, which is likely to fit well with partner's holding In favor of Double: - You don't really have a game force - You probably want the contract played from partner's side As it happened, I doubled and partner bid 4♥, which obviously made me happy. Partner held: ♠A ♥Axxx ♦Jx ♣KJTxxx

Declarer had: ♠JT9xxxxx ♥KQ ♦xx ♣x I didn't think it through enough and went for garnering my 2nd trick by playing another diamond. That went ruff. Heart KQ cashed. Spade to the Ace and heart Ace discarding the losing club. -850 :(

I rather like the idea. I would really enjoy being able to post a question and only get the top expert advice on the hands. We might get some different views on what the "right" answer is on a hand, but more importantly, we would get a great insight into how to think about finding the right answer. Naturally most regular posters filter the advice they see now based on who is posting the response. This subforum would be a place where you can just read expert opinion. I would think the easiest implementation would be: Anyone can post a question. Only a select group of posters can respond. A moderator or committee maintains the selection of posters. That's it.

[hv=d=n&v=b&s=sk5ht853dakqjcaj3]133|100|Scoring: IMP P - (4♠) - Dbl - (P); 5♦ - (P) - P - (5♠); P - (P) - ?[/hv] Pass, Double, or Door #3? Let's say you pass or double. You lead the ♦K (K for count from AK at the 5-level or higher). Here is your hand and dummy's: [hv=d=n&v=b&w=sa9ha942d5ck97642&s=sk5ht853dakqjcaj3]266|200|Scoring: IMP[/hv] Partner shows you an even number of diamonds. What now?

[hv=d=n&v=e&s=s762hqjt73dq98caq]133|100|Scoring: IMP 1♣ - (2♠) - ?[/hv] Not too many viable options. So what's it going to be?

[hv=d=s&v=b&n=sxxxhkdaqjxcq86xx&s=sqj9xhatxdktxxca7]133|200|Scoring: IMP 1NT - 3NT; All Pass[/hv] You are playing a 14-16 1NT, so you have a swift auction to 3NT. LHO leads the ♣5 (2nd/4th leads). You play small from dummy to the J and A. You play a diamond to the Q and a spade to your Q, which holds. You decide to play a club back up to dummy and LHO shows out! So you play low and RHO wins the 9. He returns a heart. What now?

[hv=d=n&v=n&w=s8532hqj5d64ct973&s=skjt94hk4daq2c852]266|200|Scoring: IMP P - (1♦) - 1♠ - (P) P - (1NT) - All Pass[/hv] You lead the ♣5 (systemic). T1: ♣5 - 7 - 4 - K T2: ♦T - 2 - 4 -8 T3: ♦J - Q - 6 - 5 T4: ? You have agreed udca with your partner. What now?